Tomsk

Latest posts by Tomsk

Thanks for the replies. These plants grow very rapidly and need a lot of pruning to keep them in one place. And I'm a bit disappointed by the flowers being covered by much taller leaves. So I was going to pull them up before they seeded and not bother with them again...

But then, as artjak said, they became completely infested with aphids and caterpillars, and this seems to be keeping them away from my other plants and tomatoes. So I think I will grow them every year from now on for that reason.

When I prune them, I now see clusters of pea-like green things growing on some stems. I take it these are the seeds, and if so how do I keep them until I'm ready to plant them?

One of my tomato plants has grown a lot since I transplanted it into soil, with the main trunk splitting into two main branches. I was adding extra stakes to help support my plants when one of the main branches of one plant fell to the side due to its weight and me rummaging around the plants tying the vines to the new stakes.

Today I notice there's a 1 inch split in the middle of the branch where it meets the trunk. The plant is now supported well, but will this whole branch now die or produce bad fruit, or are they robust enough to survive a split in a vine?

Ant tips on what I could do to help the plant at this stage? Would wrapping cling film around the split or something else help?

I had a similar situation last year, when a tomato plant grew in a compost bin.

I left it until it was big enough to handle being transplanted (it was awkward removing it from inside the bin but a flower bed may be easier for small shoots) and moved it to a 37" pot.

It produced a few tomatoes but they weren't that great. I think that was mainly down to me not knowing anything about growing them. This year I've deliberately grown several plants from seed and despite being transplanted to soil a month or two later than they should have been (circumstances) they're now doing well.

If you think you can gently lift your plant from the flowerbed without damaging the fine roots, perhaps with a kitchen fork rather than a big tool that will take a big scoop of soil out, move it to a pot about one foot across. If you don't have one and want a makeshift alternative, Aldi are currently selling plastic builders' buckets for 99p. They're just about adequate to grow a single tomato plant, but you'll have to drill drainage holed in the bottom first.

It's getting a bit late in the year, but I would try adding just four inches of compost to the bucket and plant your tomato in that (assuming it's still tiny and no proper leaves or stalk have grown yet). When it grows tall enough so there's three or four developed shoots coming 90 degrees from the main stalk, cut off the bottom couple and add more soil until there's just a couple of inches of stalk visible before the first branch. Don't over prune the shoots because the plant still needs some leaves to produce food.

Repeat this process until the bucket is full and then let the vine grow as per usual. Doing this promotes more roots which should result in better tomatoes. You can add a bamboo pole or some other support as soon as the soil is deep enough to support it, so that you don't damage wide-spreading roots later on, when you finally need to use it.

If you have any Gro-More in the house already, you could try using that until the vine starts producing flowers, since it may help speed up growth in the few months of summer we have left. Then you can use proper tomato feed. Last year, I used no feed at all and that's probably another reason the tomatoes weren't great.

As someone who's never managed to persuade anything to grow before this year, my dahlias are impressing me the most at the moment:

I've had various poppy and pansy seeds produce no flowers, which has been the most disappointing thing of the year. And I have a tiny rose bush (I bought two but one died) which doesn't look very impressive at all. Perhaps it will in a couple of years when it's grown a bit and can produce more than one flower at a time!

Overall, my tomatoes seem to be going OK, though I think they're very late in developing because I was very late in transplanting them from small pots into proper soil. But tiny tomatoes are now forming and I'm hopeful that this year's wonderful summer will last.

However, I've noticed that recently new leaves on most of my plants are starting off shrivelled up and then grow into leaves with the tips shrivelled up or under-developed. is this because I had them in 3" pots for far too long or something else?

I searched Google for this and the only suggestions I can find are that my plants were exposed to weed killer, but I am certain they were not, especially in the spot I kept the 3" pots.

So any other ideas? The plants are continuing to grow, and the stems all look healthy. It's just the tips of the very top leaves that are growing shrivelled. Here's a photo of some leaves that appeared completely shrivelled but then grew into almost normal leaves but the further toward the tip they get, the more shrivelled they remain:

Thanks for the replies. I noticed that the spiders are usually found under shrivelled leaves, and wasn't sure if this was because shrivelled leaves provide a good canopy, or the spiders were biting into the leave to make them shrivel.

Thanks for the replies. I have an ideal pot that has no proper use right now, but is small enough to take inside when the season gets cold.

I read that it's good to grow basil in the same soil as tomatoes, but I can't find out for sure why? Is is too late in the year to sow basil seeds outside in the soil my tomatoes are growing in? And is tomato feed OK for basil?

Also, to speed things up a bit, I notice that Asda are selling small pots of growing basil for £1, intended to be kept in the kitchen and used as needed. Do you think they would grow into bigger plants if I bought a couple of them and transplanted them into my garden soil?